I'll throw my voice in with the rest concerning the color scheme selection and the mountains.

It would be nice if some of the political information you gave could be shown. Borders, important cities, etc. Also, on both versions of the map, you have some dark marks which I take to be smudges on the paper but which radiate from the center of the map and make it look strangely like the map is flying away from the viewer and towards the paper below. If those marks have more meaning that just as smudging, then you might want to make that clearer somehow, otherwise if the marks were more random and less radial I think the flying-map look would go away.

It's a very nice map, and I look forward to seeing its developments.